112864-how-many-people-are-really-leaving-wildstar
Page 1, Page 2 Content ---- Yes and no. It's hard to say right now. It's obvious and expected that the game's lost a lot of subs since the launch peak, I don't think there's any debate about that. The question seems to be whether the rate of increase has stabilized the departing population to form the turnover cycle and how many people are coming back with the next drop. The biggest problem seems to be that Wildstar uses an old-school separate server system, which is incredibly sensitive to population rises and falls. In the beginning, Carbine had far too few servers to handle the population, which forced them to open more. Now they have far too many, leaving those servers desolate. The megaserver merge should make it a non-issue for players, which will mean we likely won't get as many threads about population. However, until the day you stop playing, whatever the company line is, the game will be "dying" for pet peeve here in every single MMORPG ever made. It's sort of the last refuge for an argument that doesn't stand on its own, and unless the thread is literally about population, using the game population as a reason to do something generally means you don't need to take what's said too seriously. Good arguments for game improvement always have and always shall stand on their own, and will be good ideas whether the population is rising or falling. The "sky is falling" trope generally means what you're looking at isn't going to be well thought out. Not always, but much more often than not. | |} ---- Right now, I'm thinking about a banana... mmmmmmmm banana To be honest, yeah we probably lose a lot of subs since beginning, and probably more than expected (I don't have hard facts here, just a hunch) BUT The game is stabilizing, we have a good pool of players, probably more to come during the first year due to word of mouth and improvement of the game. So don't worry about a thing, bad mouth are gonna be long gone in no time :) | |} ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- TexArcana, please report to Levin Bay. New players have been sighted and require a false sense of active server populations | |} ---- ---- True story - I rolled a new Dominion character on Pergo a few nights ago. It was after 1:30AM CST and I still saw 4-5 other new characters running around doing the starter quests on the boat. I'm not a "sky ifs falling" guy, but a few of the gamers I started playing this have stopped playing. I was in a guild at launch, and most of them cleared out after the first free month was up. In my current guild of Amazing guys I've known for 2-3 years, most have stopped logging in nightly,and will probably stop playing soon when their CREDD stockpile runs out in August. I continue to play almost nightly because I really enjoy the pvp. I still see lots of folks out and about in the capital city, and low-level practice BGs are popping within 3-5 minutes for me mast nights. (I heard there might have been a problem last night/early this morning, but that's probably an isolated incident.) So, yeah, it's real, but I think that's to be expected with any new game launch as folks burn out and their free time expires. Plus, a lot of the high school and college kids are back in school. It's definitely not the end of the world. This is still a great game, and the megaservers will help most servers (excluding Evindra, of course.) | |} ---- We. Hear. And. Obey. All. Units. Report. To. Levian. Bay. For. Population. Assessment. | |} ---- Chua want to see concrete examples. "implementation is poor" mean nothing to Chua. What exactly is poor then? | |} ---- ---- Did Human ever try.........minimizing quest tracker...........? | |} ---- ---- That's a really great way to describe the situation. Some of the die-hard MMO'ers I know from other games have no intention of going anywhere anytime soon, nor do I. They, and I, just love this game. | |} ---- ---- ---- You make me sorry I didn't roll Dom. Agreed a hundred times over, Olivar! Phenomenal game! It's not dead, it's 3 months old... the point where EVERY MMO population has a sharp decline. And, unfortunately, the MMO community loves to whine about every tiny change that comes their way, so there's a lot of negativity on the surface, but that just comes with playing with people who rage over their mommy not slicing a banana into their cereal that morning. Seems these twits expect a bug-free, perfectly polished game right at launch... never gonna happen; never has happened. I digress, the population has been declining but is beginning to stabilize. Very much worth sticking around for. | |} ---- is not too late, can still play Dominion. Chua made device, not even hurt this time. Just removes Exile thoughts from brain. In some cases maybe remove brain...minor detail | |} ---- ---- Maybe I should level a fifth character to level 50 and see it with my own eyes. Endgame feels empty and very lonely. | |} ---- ---- That's exactly what it is. Hopefully, they can build on that base with "free months" for returning subscribers and some advertising. Have you seen advertising? | |} ---- ---- ---- ---- Probably not until they get this massive drop in. No use having a huge publicity drive, get people into the game, and have them go, "Uh... so we're all waiting for improvements?" Generally, the people you grab with advertising are looking for immediate gratification. | |} ---- True, but I would think any newcomers would have at least a month of content to keep them busy until then. Plus, they can do Warplots. Have you seen Warplots? | |} ---- A new MMO with bugs!? Whodathunkit? GL finding any other MMO that doesn't have this issue in their first year. | |} ---- did you read anything? ive reported it numerous times in 3 months (no longer a new MMO) its the principle not the detail. just got it with a wave of perspective, were arguing over the life of a made up universe over a series of wires connecting us through thousands of miles with a bitter gamer (me) a man who thinks hes a space rat, and a host of others while people are going to (or are at) work on a monday morning at 1030 am , its good time to be alive i suppose. moderator edit: content Edited September 8, 2014 by Chillia | |} ---- You just don't understand, Tek! This is 2014. Everything is perfect in 2014. Software bugs are sooooo last decade. See, now people have choices! CHOICES!!!!!! CHOICES!!!!! If it's less than perfect, today's youth doesn't have to accept it. They only accept perfection. You can tell this by their spelling and social skills, being as flawless as they are. Read through some of the other threads about this. You'll see. Every time we have one, some yahoo pipes in with that exact phrasing. "If it's not perfect at launch, it's crap. Bugs are unacceptable in any form. Only perfection is expected or accepted. Anything less means I'm going to back to WoW." | |} ---- I'd like to see more PVP-centric guilds. They tend to disintegrate due to the egos involved, but it'd be great to see 40 on 40 guild trash talking going on in warplots. | |} ---- You also forgot to add the inevitable comparison of games to cars or phones. "I wouldn't still drive a model T/use an old cell phone, so Wildstar shouldn't have bugs that WoW did at launch!" Too bad, despite the technological advancement of both these items, cars and cell phones still have recalls/bugs/failures.... | |} ---- ---- See? I rest my case - and this guy did it for me. /smug | |} ---- Well that's not true. Are you arguing that every MMORPG out there that succeeds is perfect? Because I'll be straight up, Wildstar's not the buggiest game out there, far from it. I mean, say what you want, WoW's got a long patch list of bug fixes once a month or so. It's definitely not why people would honestly leave and go back to WoW or any of Wildstar's contemporaries. Bugs and issues exist in all of them, and it's not like people haven't noticed or anything. It's all about familiarity for most people. WoW's the devil they know. | |} ---- ---- *clears throat* World of Warcraft. | |} ---- ---- ---- LMAO you really think that after 3 months an MMO isn't new anymore? I'd say its entire first year is its infancy stage. moderator edit: content Edited September 8, 2014 by Chillia | |} ---- Oh no, I mean right now. Those are the known issues that Blizzard is aware of. They haven't dropped a content patch since a year ago Wednesday. They still to this day, deal with an epic truckload of bugs. | |} ---- ---- ---- *ahems* *checks his insult rifle at the door* There have been a ton of games that have had rough launches. EA alone is guilty of half a dozen of them. Sims 4? Battlefield 4? SimCity 2013? or.. oh! Diablo 3! That was a GREAT launch! Let's see... *thinks* Grand Theft Auto V's Multiplayer. That was a disaster. Oh! Rome 2! "We've built the greatest historical game ever!" ...except it doesn't run. Call of Duty: Ghosts for PC? Yep. That had a ton of problems too. Btw. All of these are commercial successes. | |} ---- Should work just fine - unless you're using IE, that browser has issues with our forum system. Again, we already have active threads on these topics, so if you want to discuss bug fixes or population please use the appropriate threads. | |} ---- Fixed. :) | |} ---- ---- ---- Forum Warriors. Oh man.. add that to the White Knights and we're gonna have a MMO Crusade soon! | |} ---- ---- anything produced by Bioware or Bethesda... | |} ---- Hard facts: 1. The devs are making many changes to the game design. This says that they are not happy with the player retention, because if they were, they would be doing more of the same instead of changing things around drastically. After all, you don't fix what isn't broken, right? 2. Server merges ("megaservers") are widely perceived in the industry as a sign of failure for an MMO. Whether that is absolutely true or not is a bit of an open question, but most MMO development teams would rather cut off a limb (figuratively speaking) than do a server merge. Nevertheless, Carbine is doing one. That means they were concerned enough about the declining player population to take a large PR hit. They are also offering free transfers, which is a very good thing for the players, but a bad thing for the company: they are giving away services they had been charging for. This says they would rather take the hit from the direct loss of revenue than risk losing any more players. If they had plenty of players, they would never do this. 3. Reports like this one from all over the gamesphere: http://remnants-gaming.com/2014/08/29/wildstar/ Large guilds quitting the game entirely due to lack of the ability to maintain a raid roster, or having to combine rosters (which guilds hate to do) in order to have enough people to raid. Most casual guilds are even deader. 4. Wildstar message boards around the gamesphere are going quiet and dead. The subreddit population has plunged, and even these official forums are seeing way less traffic than they used to. All the other game sites have essentially no Wildstar discussion at all. Just a growing silence. People like to talk about stuff they are enjoying. Very few people are talking about Wildstar. 5. Before the free transfers, low populations showing on all servers in all geographic regions, even at peak play times. 6. We have some hard financial data from NCSoft regarding Wildstar. You have to back-figure from the revenue using some assumptions, but even the most generous assumptions show that initial sales were average at best, and the revenue forecasts going into the future look dismal. ($9 million for fourth quarter 2014? Around $3 million a month projected? That's a lot for you and me but not much at all for an MMO of this size.) Low projected revenue means not many people playing, period. 7. Anecdotal evidence regarding the game's very low popularity on sites such as Twitch, Raptr, and Xfire. This data needs to be taken with a large grain of salt as there are lots of reasons why the numbers on these sites wouldn't be true representations of the game's overall player base, but still: Wildstar has dropped almost entirely off the radar on all three sites. --------------------- Obviously not everyone has left the game. There may be as many as 100k players still active, which is a lot of people in real-life terms. It's just probably not enough to keep the game going long-term. There are definitely more "active" accounts than actual people playing -- many folks are waiting out the upcoming changes using CREDD, and some paid for months of game time in advance but aren't using it. But the revenue forecast says that those "active" accounts are, at the moment, expected to expire rather than reactivate; the players are not expected to return unless changes are made, which is why changes are being made. If by "hard facts" you mean you want NCSoft to reveal actual sub numbers, that's not going to happen. The only thing they have to legally disclose is revenue, and to disclose anything more if the numbers aren't good would be stupid. (If the numbers were good, they'd be trumpeting them -- another sign that they aren't good.) But if you go to the water hole and you see tiger tracks, and orange and black hairs shed all over, and a dead half-eaten antelope, it's a good bet there's a tiger around even if you can't see him right this second. | |} ---- This. I'm around because of CREDD. It's too easy to farm CREDD after you cap EGs, so I'm sticking around til I run out of CREDD. | |} ---- ---- No one expects the Lopp inquisition! | |} ---- Except these aren't "hard facts". There's only one hard fact we do know, there are less people around now than there were at launch. 1. For instance, they could have (and probably were) thinking megaservers since the game's launch. They had the opposite server issue then, and knew adding servers was going to leave them threadbare (they said as much). Megaservers are the only permanent solution to the fluctuation problem. Some games don't care (Steamwheedle Cartel has been a dead zone for years). Obviously, Wildstar's playerbase won't let it slide. 2. Considering #1, I'm not sure I see "megaservers" as being a sign of failure. EVE's one of the most profitable sub games in the world with one. It should be an industry standard. Separated servers have the issue of having "dead" servers in every single game they're in. 3. I wouldn't even doubt raids would fall apart and reform considering everyone knew the initial population spike would end and that those characters would need to be ejected from the guilds, then those guilds would need to merge. However, I'm fairly sure Oceanic players have a better than average reason to not want to play. 4. This board's been nothing but hellfire and brimstone. People were complaining about issues and their issues not being addressed. Now that Carbine's addressing the issues, most people are in "wait and see" mode. I don't have as much to post about because I don't know what's in the next drop precisely. When we do, the boards light up again (as you may have noticed every time something is mentioned like megaservers or the drop pushback). 5. This has been discussed to death and makes sense. If you have a huge amount of initial players, a massive spike you know (and have reported) will leave soon after launch, and you put in more servers that people can't freely transfer between, people leave at a relatively uniform proportion (of server population) then all realms become low. This isn't even the first time this has happened in an MMORPG, and not the first time it's happened to a successful one. It's a major weakness of the dissociated server model of parsing. If anything, I'm more surprised Wildstar launched with standalone servers, but apparently the technology on their end wasn't there for it at launch. 6. Given their sales numbers weren't in any way bad, I'm not sure where this is coming from. They're not WoW, FF, or even GW, they're a new IP from a new company. It takes a long time for new IPs to build up a head of steam. Obviously, they weren't expecting the launch they got, so odds are they're down to earth about where they expected. There's been no indication from anyone anywhere that they're operating below NCSoft's expectations. Who knows with NCSoft (they're a freakish guillotine of a publisher), but the more important question is what NCSoft expects. IT could be Wildstar is doing better than even lowered expectations and they're playing a long game. Maybe NCSoft will call it a failure with any less than 10 million subs and is ready to axe the whole team. As long as the game is profitable (it's paying the bills and turning dollars of some degree) everything else is relative and it's really impossible to know. 7. Is actually a point that lends the most credence and is the most important. It's not reliable evidence, but obviously people actively play the game less than Carbine wants them to. Even if they're not unsubbed, even if they're still active, even if they have no plans to unsub, that number is important. If people log in for two days to do dailies and raid, then don't log in until next week, they may as well not be playing as far as the player population is concerned. And that's going to be a big issue for the next drop, raising that concurrency. In the long haul, players care about players playing, not players paying. That's where most of these changes are directly aimed; getting players to stay in the game world longer and do more than just adjust plants in housing. 10,000 players spread even across a server playing 10 hours a week across their given times reduces an otherwise decent number of players to nothing in practical terms. If they're playing 40, you quadruple the "fullness" of the servers. That's the important number for them to address as far as we're concerned. They could have 10 million players and, with the current system of separate servers and player concurrency, they could still have a lot of these same complaints. | |} ---- I was never real. All my beta feedback that led to actual changes in the game was randomly generated from text culled from other game forums. I fooled the devs. I fooled you. I am Skynet. | |} ---- And the game itself isn't new. This is just porting it over to the western world. | |} ---- So now you are stooping to "their" level by pointing out "their" inferior social and spelling skills? I expected a bit more intelligence from you Tex. I may not have agreed with many of the things you post, but I always respected your opinion. Obviously, you dont hold the same sentiments about anyone that disagrees with you. Shame on you for this post, but grats. You are no longer "above" those you rant against. | |} ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- A lot of people's issues with the game are not the game's difficulty itself. | |} ---- I'm just kind of surprised at 90 days in.. people are STILL expecting NOT a niche game. "This game doesn't cater to everyone!?" Yes. The bugs and RNG needs to be addressed. But.. again.. 90 days. They're working on it. As for the "Megaserver" is a failure. Hyperbole, much? Let me put this into terms of "real world" ideas. A failure is if the game fails to make a profit and RoI. Anything short of that, gamers just being gamers. The shareholders of NCSoft aren't going to care if you did a server merge or if your reddit doesn't have 1,000,000 upvotes. They're going to care what you're doing to make them cash. Simple. | |} ---- eh...not sure I'd go with a "ton". For some people this is true, but there are and or were other issues that have made people leave... Some people are also just not logging on until Drop 3 as well... | |} ---- ---- The videos they had showed that Raids were hard. I wasn't intending to Raid anyway, so I bought in. Dungeon difficulty was definitely a surprise. But I changed my expectations and am doing fine. It's those that didn't change their expectations that left. | |} ---- It's pretty common to think or be vocal about what you believe you want, when in actuality what you want is far from what you vocalized. Raid 3-4hours a night at 5 days a week for wipes, crap loot, and walls....hardcore or Raid 3-4hours two days out of a week for great loot, progression, and fun w/.friends, stress free....Sold. | |} ---- ---- The dungeons seem pretty tame compared to the cc fests that were many vanilla wow dungeons. scarlet armory would make most of these whiners cry. | |} ---- ---- ---- Nice. I did not know that... makes it even better. I downloaded the open beta, made myself a lil dude and played for about 15 minutes before my computer totally froze. Something which hasn't happened to me since the early 2000's. So I hop over to the forums, find a 52 page thread that says basically that nothing has been fixed, and if I keep trying it will kill my system like it did theirs, and nope on outta there for good. | |} ---- you are right. they should just start everyone at level 50, give them the best gear and weapons without breaking a sweat, and then..... yeah you cant do that with a game 90 days after release. It cannot be made to just be easy because you will hit a wall and have nothing to do and be bored by how easy it is. mmo's require strategy and length. there needs to be a grind whether its to cap to level then raid, or cap level > attune > raid. it provides meat to end content otherwise it would just be end. its a catch 22 of all mmo developers and everybody thinks the solution is to make them quicker and easier so they are more "enjoyable" i for one dont find it enjoyable to be spoon fed and to have someone wipe my ass. even in WS current state its super easy to hit 50 and the attunement process grind is just Act II of the game. God forbid they just dont let their players beat the game and sit around with their thumbs up their ass waiting for more content and leave because it is taking to long to supply new content because they have to fix remaining issues first to please those who havent capped and have nothing left to do. | |} ---- You say this in jest, but right after launch, we had a small contingent of people who asked for that very thing. | |} ---- ---- Sad to see that people even think this is the reason for many people leaving. I finished attunement, i helped get many others attuned. I didn't find the game hard. The game is don't stand in red.. interrupt at right time.. and its over. Not really.. hard. The only "hard" thing about the game is relying on other people to not make a mistake. 1 Mistake = *cupcake*ed is not the same as the game being hard to me. Its more like beat your head against the wall until everything goes correctly. | |} ---- ---- Yeah, these people were pretty serious. I can usually spot a real troll pretty quickly. These guys SERIOUSLY just wanted to buy the game and start raiding. "This game is about Raiding hardcore! Why do I have to do this stupid leveling grinding?" As for the "I Quit" threads, they come in a couple of distinct flavors: 1. The Legit Quit. Player has issues with the game, details those problems and leaves with a "I hope they fix this so I can come back." 2. The Rage Quit: Player has issues with the game, but poor communication skills. Comes here, screams loudly and leaves in a huff after receiving abuse from the community. 3. The Other Game Fanboy Quit: Player discovers this game does something differently than their previous game of choice (usually WoW or GW2), player is unwilling to adapt, comes and complains, gets told "This isn't WoW" and then leaves in a huff. 4. The "It's Not You, It's Me" Quit: My personal favorite and the one I'll probably use when I go my merry way. Game is not delivering one or more facets the player deems vital, player accept it's not the game but their own preference, and leaves. Not that any of these posts, no matter how thoughtful or well-received, will stay unlocked for more than a half-page (unless it's posted at lunch time or the middle of the night.) The Mods have obviously been instructed to not let any "Quit Threads" stay on the first page. They don't delete them, they just make sure they slide off the front page as quickly as possible. | |} ---- This is probably the truest statement in this entire thread. The community did as much damage to itself as the game did. Thread after thread after thread of people offering criticism and being told, under in no uncertain terms, that ANY change would ruin the game and if you don't like it, then leave. Guess what? They left. And here we are! Pat yourselves on the backs, Uber-Leets! Well done! I am sure you're all very proud of yourselves. | |} ---- ---- you had taken what I said and went the extreme, a middle ground or options within difficulty would have been better. Even though I generally enjoy W*, Hardcore will go down on what not to do for future development in mmo's. There are plenty of niche eastern mmo's, hardcore rpg's, and esports pvp out in the market, you want a mmo to succeed in the west make it casual fun. That doesn't mean spoon fed & cash shop instant gratification loot either. | |} ---- Difficulty isn't the only reason, lack of content is another reason, but it is certainly tied to difficulty and the difficulty curve. There is plenty of content if you want to raid difficult content, which the majority of the playerbase does not want to do, even if that is what they thought they wanted. However, Carbine touted having adventures, shiphands, and solo content as easier content. Except with only 4 adventures, 0 max level shiphands, and 2 daily quest locations at max level, there just isn't enough easier or less time consuming content to satisfy the majority of players once they cap, and that content is also not rewarding enough. Content is not fun when it is outside your difficulty tolerance (either too easy or too hard), and there is very little content for the easy to medium difficulty range. Carbine attempted, but failed to mold the population into "hardcore" raiders. So both the players who knew they weren't going to raid, and players who raided or tried to raid and found out it wasn't for them, have no content to fall back on at level cap, and with the linear, and quite uninspired, leveling process there is very little replay value, and certainly not enough to warrant a sub. Carbine essentially delivered raid or bust, but with no corresponding difficulty levels. | |} ---- ---- ---- So you believe that over half of the game population is on CREDD, and is being purchased by whom? I'm a subscriber and I've never purchased CREDD from the store to sell. | |} ---- True story: I had a dommie SS try to gank my on Farside the other night!! That hasn't happened in, like, weeks, not even in the daily areas!! I think *sniffle*, I think we're gonna be ok! | |} ---- ---- ---- That's sad. I didn't know you'd stopped playing. | |} ---- I didn't make a big "I QUIT FU" post, that's why :P. | |} ---- ---- ---- I find the costume customizing amazing... equip and dye any piece of armor in the game, far from 1 costume. | |} ---- What other full costumes are there besides the Raidin' set? Yes I have the two gifted sets which are not available on the AH (highway-man and Eldan) and the fugly squirg hat and beret. No, I do not own the fez nor do I wish to own it. Now if additional NEW and ATTRACTIVE equipment skins - rather than the tired recycled skins Carbine insists on using over and over again, new mounts, and new costumes were introduced in future content I'd be all for that. Costume sets obtained through a rep grind WOULD incent a LOT of filthy casual RPers to go out and do dailies.. (ex Torine Sisterhood set, Belle Walker's tank top, Mazaka harem girl set) | |} ---- I think he confused COSTUME with ability to equip armor as costume. I am with you, I really expected and wanted more "costumes". Cool sets that are non-armor. Was disappointed. | |} ---- Not to mention the inability to change your skin color or body style, or at the very least your hairstyle or jewelry? A barber/plastic surgeon is not hard to implement.I'd even pay real money for that provided it's a reasonable cost. A game that touted itself on customization pre-launch is falling flat on it's face. Bolting a Ramen Bowl to the hood of my mount at a ridiculous cost is not customization to me. Yes I could go back to WOW or GW2 to satisfy my paper doll needs, but I WANT to play in this world... on Nexus... beyond the stars. This game is absolutely beautiful, quirky, and has ridiculous amounts of potential. | |} ---- ---- ---- ---- Actualy there are about 3-4 new costumes on the PTR. And you forgot the Strain costume :P | |} ---- prove it. | |} ---- That is very good news indeed then! :) | |} ---- Remember folks, the fact that only one person lives in a town isn't what causes only one person to buy a house; it's merely a concurrent event. | |} ---- http://raptr.com/ http://www.overwolf.com/ Decrease and staggering of the play time of the active players is the dominant cause of concurrency problems (which occurs for various reasons I've discussed in other threads) P.S. nothing can ever be proven; only supported beyond legitimate doubt through a confluence of evidence. The only two fields where 'proof' actually exists in a technical sense is Mathematics and Logic Correlation =/=Causation. The fact that one person lives in a town is not a causative agent in there being only one person to purchase a home there. Lack of commercial builders; undesirable land, and negative environmental / policy issues are potential causations; not the fact that one person lives there. | |} ---- ---- ---- You're talking about Archeage aren't you? :) That's exactly what happened to me. I might give it another shot at some point near launch, but I'll be playing it as a free character. | |} ---- Everyone is hoping their Inquisitor is Yatish, in the bedroom, with a block of butter. | |} ---- The CREDD idea is a direct copy of EVE Online's PLEX. EVE has had a stable population for years as a niche title, no reason WildStar can't do the same. | |} ---- ---- ---- True, but F2P gamers have low standards. I'm not even saying that as an insult. This can be a good thing as it gives games time to grow (while I remember the instant ragequit threads of "paying customers" on these forums mere weeks after launch as soon as something wasn't to their liking). You truly have to be pretty abysmally bad as an F2P game to completely fail. So niche or not, AA seems to have better longterm survival chances than Wildstar to me at this moment in time. Edit: Come to think of it... I wonder how successful a business model would be that starts as F2P and then introduces mandatory subscription later, once it has smoothed everything out and developed a solid playerbase. Get players hooked for free, then spring the trap shut once they're invested. I'm sure some of the cheapskate usual suspects would grudgingly pay rather than lose their progress. ;) | |} ---- Well once we're talking about AA, I think Wildstar would be in a better position if they did what AA is doing. Have it F2P, but keep housing and other features locked unless they have a subscription. | |} ---- I completely agree. But all im saying is that it will be a rude awakening once the game hoppers figure out that AA is nothing more than a niche (a niche smaller than wildstars) game. I actually think a game model like you describe can actually be extremely successful if done right, but they really gotta advertise it and let customers know that after x amount of time, it will require everyone to pay x amount of money to keep playing it. I would actually love to see an mmo launch with this model. This way, it gives time for the devs to fix all major issues, while still having a big retation rate of players, and still guaranteeing a premium service/content for players. I'll say its a win/win for everyone. | |} ---- There's a major flaw in F2P as a model for gamers themselves. Companies make games to make money, so they can pay their bills and such. Nothing changes that. Subscription games put the money up front, like a utility company, and they are rewarded based on how many people play the game (subscribe). F2P games are different, because they make their money elsewhere in the game than from people playing, and therefore have incentive to promote that. At the best, you get games with a watered down version that is free, but which is constantly showing you should pay a sub, so the money comes from people subbing. At worst, you have game companies literally designing games to make you want to buy things. Either way, the incentive isn't to make the entire game interesting for the playerbase, it's to sell a product. Essentially, F2P games use their games as advertising for whatever they actually are selling. I mean, honestly, I spent more than 15 dollars at Wendy's this week to buy lunch for my wife and me. I could afford WoW during the crash working at Target. F2P games make more money because, in the end, advertising sells products and F2P games are giant advertisements for more goods and services you have to buy. People will spend more in those games than on subs quite often because they don't realize how the game is designed to manipulate them into it. I'd much rather Carbine makes the game good for everyone because we're all technically "paying in". CREDD makes the game about as free as it needs to be for anyone. The reason you see the fire lit under Carbine's ass and not under most other game companies' is because of how the sub model incentivizes them. | |} ---- The main reason that Wildstar can't do the same is that EVE is privately owned by the game developers. CCP can freely choose to run the game for low profit, no profit, or even at a loss if they want to keep shoving money into it. It's their money and they can do what they like. NCSoft is a public company. Wildstar has to make a reasonable profit to remain up and running for the long term. It has to make a somewhat better than reasonable profit to continue adding new content, which is expensive. A secondary reason why Wildstar won't be EVE 2.0 is that EVE is a unique product. This gives it staying power in that people can't find any other MMO experience that's like EVE. EVE has essentially zero competition. Wildstar, on the other hand, is directly in competition with the biggest fish out there -- WoW, FFXIV, SWTOR and even NCSoft's own GW2 to a certain extent. ESO also counts as competition although it's not exactly a big fish at the moment. If Wildstar were privately owned and if it offered something unique I would say it was doing fine. But neither of those is true so I can't say that. | |} ---- Which is the exact reason i hate f2p games. I bought into the whole GW2 b2p model hype....and it ended up being exactly that, hype. | |} ---- As far as uniqueness goes, show me another Sci-Fi MMO with action combat, I dare you. Or maybe one with the humor and style of WS? City of Heroes was a niche MMO published by NCSoft and ran for 8 years. Nuff said. | |} ----